Various methods of creating in color a hologram-like real image or a hologram exist, and such images can be used to create unusual displays of a scale measurement or digital time or the like. However there has not been a sale or publication of an attempt to capitalize on the assembled mechanical combination of such hologram-like real images with intersecting moving real mechanical assemblies or parts or animals to provide surprising illusions where one solid body appears to pass periodically and repetitively through another to attract viewer attention in three dimensional retail, entertainment, household or industrial displays. Most importantly, there has not been any invention combining the concepts of movable objects cooperating with “real images” where the images are viewable from a 360 degree viewpoint such that one can walk around the image and see the movement, or if in the moving object can look at the approaching object and view the object upon departure from its image field. The view is not merely of an object in color with a perception of depth; the object is visible and examinable by the human eye as a fully three-dimensional object with no los of depth or stereoscopic integrity.
Monroe, U.S. Pat. No. 5,257,130, Oct. 26, 1993, appears to be the most applicable prior art, but uses parabolic reflectors to project two dimensional images onto a screen to be viewed by a rider in an amusement ride. No three dimensional aspect is involved. There is suggested laser technology generating holograms, but lasers and viewing them have safety issues which the invention does not present. Welck, U.S. Pat. No. 4,802,750, Feb. 7, 1989 discussed the portrayal of a virtual image on the optical axis, but the use of offset parabolas restricts the ability to fully, from all around the object, to see the object and work with and/or portray it. The seminal art involving parabolic reflectors generating a real image from an object with the parabolic mirror assembly is that of Ellings et al, U.S. Pat. No. 3,647,284, Mar. 7, 1972. As described by Welck '750, Ellings '284 creates an image floating above the parabolic mirror assembly. This invention is designed to use various objects to cooperate with the Ellings art and create novel novelty devices.